We now know that 2000 children have been separated from their parents since the new policy took place. That is April 19th-May 31st. So, basically 40 days. At this rate, by the end of the year, this number will balloon to over 10,000. Trump has continued to lie all morning about the policy, saying it is a Democratic law. Not only does this remain forever a lie, but 40 Senate Democrats led by Dianne Feinstein have a bill ready to go right now to stop this policy. No Republicans have signed on, and it will not be brought to the floor. It is one thing to lie about the origins of the policy. It is another to claim someone about the other side when the reality is they are ACTIVELY trying to stop it, but lack the power to do so.
I (and many others) are also starting to find it exceedingly odd and worrisome that the scant pictures we have seen of these children (since they aren't allowing reporters to take pictures or video, which in and of itself is an alarm bell) are ALL young boys. Where are the girls?? For that matter, what is happening to the infants, who may in fact have been relying on breast feeding for their nutrition??
Chris Hayes of MSNBC (who essentially broke this story nationally on his show a few weeks ago) is saying that they have obtained documents that shed even more light on what is actually happening here, and will be reporting on it tonight. I will be watching, and will post what is reported, and link the video if I think it warrants it like last time.
This has gone global now, a lot of countries and people all over the world are looking now and US reputation is sinking quickly. It looks like Canada are in the "immigration" spotlight now too, arresting a Canadian citizen for 8 months in maximum security prison. Well, here in Brazil at least, more people are talking about the upskirt pictures issue in England, but the talk is more about why anyone would want to see that, rather than women's rights
Never thought I'd live to see the US clearly violating basic human rights in this country. I mean the whole black people being victims of police violence has been enough of an issue but things are seeking to spill over into everything under Trump.
We got an Attorney General quoting the Bible passage used to defend slavery as the reason and we got a President who won't even admit that he's doing it without blaming others - he takes no responsibility. Totally disgusting.
So, as I speculated last night before having the evidence, I surmised that the Administration was likely tearing families apart based on misdemeanor offenses, which would be a person crossing illegally for the first time. Of those who are being charged and have had their kids ripped from them, the documentation obtained by MSNBC confirms that a full 91% of these cases are being done based on a misdemeanor charge of a first-time crossing. We really have no idea how many of these people are trying to claim asylum and being charged anyway. In fact, according the the documents, it appears that in many cases, the children are being forcibly separated BEFORE the decision to prosecute or not is even being made. Some examples of misdemeanors that likely wouldn't cause a US resident to have their child essentially kidnapped and put in a prison camp (this will vary by State):
Speeding Driving without license or insurance Shoplifting Prostitution Graffiti Trespassing Marijuana possession 1st-time DUI Public Drunkenness Failure to appear in court Obscenity
NONE of these crimes if committed by anyone on this forum would likely result in more than a single night in jail before being let out in lieu of a court date. Even if that court date came, a first time offense for even the most serious of them would likely result in (at most) a hefty fine and some probation. Some of them are likely to ONLY result in a fine. Yet the same level of crime is being used as an excuse to hold people indefinitely while awaiting an immigration hearing and, more importantly, as an excuse to STEAL their children and throw them into camp run by private companies (for a profit) for months on end. In a development that should surprise absolutely no one, former Iraq War defense contractors are getting on the action. This is being done to make money:
MVM bills itself as having “extensive domain expertise in counter-narcotics, criminal and civil investigations, public safety, and national security.” It’s perhaps better known as a security contractor for U.S. intelligence.
How does that in ANY way qualify a company to run a detention center for young children??
Federal Contracting databases show MVM was awarded a contract worth up to $8 million over the next five years. The contract, kicked off in September 2017, calls for the company to provide assistance in emergency shelter operations for unaccompanied children and extends through September 2022.
In addition to MVM’s work with the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), it also has contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for transporting unaccompanied undocumented children around McAllen. According to a contractor database, the work has earned MVM nearly $43 million since last September.
More:
It’s not just MVM. The defense contracting giant General Dynamics is advertising a data-entry position within ORR’s case-coordination program for undocumented children that will, among other things, monitor youths’ cases as they move through the system. Other General Dynamics jobs for ORR involve policy analysis; tracking “new placements and progress of minors in ORR funded care”; supporting ORR’s director in, among other tasks, “review[ing] files and redact[ing] information as directed.”
Defense contractors. It always comes back to millions upon millions upon millions of dollars for defense contractors. What defense contractors know about running a facility engaged in what would essentially be child care is anyone's f***ing guess, but there you have it. The military and prison industrial complexes have finally figured out a way to merge. All it's going to take is snatching thousands of children from their parents at the border.
As of 3 hours ago, 43 Democratic Senators are in support of a bill barring this practice. In a surprise to absolutely no one, not a single Republican has joined. They are imploring even ONE to do so, and being met with silence.
Never thought I'd live to see the US clearly violating basic human rights in this country.
Do you not count something like Guantanamo Bay?
" in this country. "
technicality.
I agree Guantanamo Bay was terrible too, those pictures. Bush and Cheney and those guys gave free reign to torture. There's the passage in Comey's book talks about how he had to said by the FBI directors bed and block the AG from getting the dying FBI directors sign off on the "enhanced interrogation program" (torture) that Bush and Cheney and those guys were trying to get the dying man to sign off on since Comey was saying he wouldn't. So that was Comey's other main claim to fame before screwing up the election and helping Trump. And anyway, it turns out the next AG just authorized the torture program anyway.
Obama messed up by not closing that place as he said he would and also since he didn't prosecute people like Gina Haspel for the torture program their careers were ruined - but not ruined enough - because Trump sought out those torturers and gave them jobs in the current administration.
Never thought I'd live to see the US clearly violating basic human rights in this country.
Do you not count something like Guantanamo Bay?
" in this country. "
technicality.
I agree Guantanamo Bay was terrible too, those pictures. Bush and Cheney and those guys gave free reign to torture. There's the passage in Comey's book talks about how he had to said by the FBI directors bed and block the AG from getting the dying FBI directors sign off on the "enhanced interrogation program" (torture) that Bush and Cheney and those guys were trying to get the dying man to sign off on since Comey was saying he wouldn't. So that was Comey's other main claim to fame before screwing up the election and helping Trump. And anyway, it turns out the next AG just authorized the torture program anyway.
Obama messed up by not closing that place as he said he would and also since he didn't prosecute people like Gina Haspel for the torture program their careers were ruined - but not ruined enough - because Trump sought out those torturers and gave them jobs in the current administration.
I agree that this is a particularly obvious example of violating human rights because it's so easy to see the impact on individual people. However, by international standards there are plenty of other problems. This report is written from the liberal human rights perspective, so many of the problems it identifies could be seen as a good thing from another perspective. Nevertheless I think it helps to illustrate that what is going on in relation to would-be immigrants is not some aberration, but part of a wider pattern.
We've discussed extensively in this thread issues in the US that (obviously in my opinion) breach basic human rights. For instance the proportion of the population that are in prison is incredibly high, as is the proportion that can't access health care.
Well, here in Brazil at least, more people are talking about the upskirt pictures issue in England, but the talk is more about why anyone would want to see that, rather than women's rights
The problem about upskirting (putting a camera under a woman's skirt to take a picture) is that the law in England doesn't obviously cover this. Prosecutions can be made under voyeurism or public decency legislation. However, voyeurism currently only applies to actions done in private (not on a bus or tube for instance), while public decency legislation normally requires someone to have witnessed the action.
The law in Scotland was changed some years ago to specifically include upskirting within voyeurism and that would seem to be an easy way forward.
I dare say coverage abroad of this issue has been at least as much about the process as the issue itself. The proposed bill on upskirting was a private members bill, not something introduced by the government. This type of bill can easily be lost because the time available to take it through Parliament is very limited. In this instance the time ran out because a single MP exercised their right to object to its passage - triggering a need for debate which was not possible in the limited time. However, the government supported the bill and have said that they will now add the issue to the government's own legislative program, so it shouldn't take too long to get the law amended.
As a wider point I have some sympathy with the MP who raised the objection. He knew nothing about upskirting itself, but he's part of a small group of MPs who believe in principle that it's not right to change the law without properly debating issues (there's a bit about that in this article) - and he's raised this type of objection on numerous occasions before to prevent things going through on the nod. It would obviously be far preferable if he took the chance to look at proposed bills and think about whether they made sense ahead of time, but there clearly are instances where changes to the law have been made quickly in response to public concerns and it's later become apparent that the revised law wasn't working well - the law on dangerous dogs is often referred to in this category.
Another story caught my eye today about a boy with severe epilepsy who's unable to use the cannabis oil treatment that was very helpful to him while in the US. Cannabis is illegal in the UK and though some cannabis derivatives are permitted that's not the case with compounds containing THC.
As my son has epilepsy I probably react to this sort of thing emotionally, but the medical profession and public are strongly in support of a change to the law to allow medical uses of cannabis (many are also in favor of making it legal in toto, though the basis for those arguments is rather different) and I'm pretty sure that will happen in future. It's a real anomaly at the moment that medical use of heroin is so well established that no-one even thinks twice about this, whereas cannabis is totally outlawed.
In the interim until the law is changed we're left with ridiculous situations like this one. Personally I find it hard to believe there is actually no way forward if officials chose to exercise it. I know there is for instance provision in the law to allow unlicensed medicines to be used in individual cases and I'm pretty sure there would be the possibility of a similar sort of exemption in this case. I'm not sure if the reason for not exercising that possibility is the result of some people holding strong philosophical objections to cannabis, or just a 'jobsworth' mentality.
Edit: I've just confirmed it's possible for the Home Office to issue a temporary license, so this case could be resolved immediately. This isn't the only case of this type though, so there's clearly resistance somewhere to using the exemption procedure even where there seems such clear medical justification.
Edit 3: 5 hours after my original post it's just been announced that the Home Secretary has issued a license. It seems pretty clear to me that the publicity over this has concentrated minds and I'm glad this case has now been resolved. Let's hope lessons are learned about how to ensure things don't go so far with future similar cases.
Another story caught my eye today about a boy with severe epilepsy who's unable to use the cannabis oil treatment that was very helpful to him while in the US. Cannabis is illegal in the UK and though some cannabis derivatives are permitted that's not the case with compounds containing THC.
As my son has epilepsy I probably react to this sort of thing emotionally, but the medical profession and public are strongly in support of a change to the law to allow medical uses of cannabis (many are also in favor of making it legal in toto, though the basis for those arguments is rather different) and I'm pretty sure that will happen in future. It's a real anomaly at the moment that medical use of heroin is so well established that no-one even thinks twice about this, whereas cannabis is totally outlawed.
In the interim until the law is changed we're left with ridiculous situations like this one. Personally I find it hard to believe there is actually no way forward if officials chose to exercise it. I know there is for instance provision in the law to allow unlicensed medicines to be used in individual cases and I'm pretty sure there would be the possibility of a similar sort of exemption in this case. I'm not sure if the reason for not exercising that possibility is the result of some people holding strong philosophical objections to cannabis, or just a 'jobsworth' mentality.
Edit: I've just confirmed it's possible for the Home Office to issue a temporary license, so this case could be resolved immediately. This isn't the only case of this type though, so there's clearly resistance somewhere to using the exemption procedure even where there seems such clear medical justification.
Edit 3: 5 hours after my original post it's just been announced that the Home Secretary has issued a license. It seems pretty clear to me that the publicity over this has concentrated minds and I'm glad this case has now been resolved. Let's hope lessons are learned about how to ensure things don't go so far with future similar cases.
Similar stories in the US all the time. This one is particularly unconscionable. The reason?? I suspect the large drug companies don't want the competition. The drug war in the US has been an unmitigated disaster since it's inception. I'm not sure even our actual wars have caused as much damage overall, and that is saying something:
Yeah, there are several reasons why some folks don't want to legalize the drugs, with big pharma being just one. Competition and loss of federal funding (I mentioned a while back that money has been used for other purposes than just what it is intended for). Who's Really Fighting Legal Weed Side Effect Of Legal Pot: Police Budgets Take A Hit
President Trump has calculated that he will gain political leverage in congressional negotiations by continuing to enforce a policy he "claims" to hate — separating immigrant parents from their young children at the southern border, according to White House officials.
President Trump has calculated that he will gain political leverage in congressional negotiations by continuing to enforce a policy he "claims" to hate — separating immigrant parents from their young children at the southern border, according to White House officials.
He is taking the children and holding them hostage for a wall. There isn't any need to sugarcoat it. That is language that needs to be used to oppose this. Hostages, kidnapping and psychological child abuse (until we get proof of the inevitable examples of physical abuse). Again, out one side of their mouths, they will flat-out admit to this. On the other side, they will refuse to accept responsibility. These are Orwellian tactics. Human beings as poker chips, lives possibly irreversibly changed or even destroyed. If you don't believe me, just read this full thread (about 20 parts) from a Twiiter user who spent most of his youth in "the system":
really, when you are a child you need to be with your parents, not strangers with dubious motives who have been told that you are animals, rapists, criminals.
really, when you are a child you need to be with your parents, not strangers with dubious motives who have been told that you are animals, rapists, criminals.
As I pointed out with the statistics last night, even those whose parents are actually breaking the law are committing a misdemeanor offense of a first-time crossing. Is anyone REALLY going to argue that crossing the border is a WORSE crime than speeding or spraying graffiti on the side of a building downtown?? And even if you somehow think it rises to the level of say, a DUI or petty theft (which is frankly absurd), in what universe is this a crime that can be viewed as legitimately bad enough to confiscate children and throw them in a camp or detention center indefinitely??
And in Tornillo, the Texas town chosen for the tent city, the later part of next week is calling for daytime temperatures of well over 100 degrees, with night-time temps hovering around 75-80. The chances of dehydration and flat-out heat exhaustion not becoming a problem in a crowded camp with vulnerable children and overworked (and likely unqualified) adults as this goes forward is basically nil.
Who is asking questions like what medications these children may be allergic to?? Do they have learning or behavioral disabilities?? What sort of nutrition and formula are being given to infants who may have been breast feeding?? Frankly, is something even as simple as whether one of these kids has a peanut allergy even being taken into consideration before they are taken away?? Because that example alone could result in a fatality. Is ANYONE asking these questions?? Because I feel like I am probably putting more thought into asking about this stuff in this post than the border patrol is likely doing in real-time on the ground. Giving these kids a bed and blankets and throwing "Ice Age" with Spanish subtitles into the DVD player is not going to get the job done.
What are the procedures on how to deal with kids who wake up screaming?? Who become (justifiably) angry or just plain refuse to cooperate?? Are they physically restrained in handcuffs and put in a solitary area if they start lashing out?? How long are they kept there alone are what are they given in regards to food and water during that time period?? Moreover, just what in the hell are the qualifications of the companies running these facilities?? The American public deserves an straight answer to ALL of these questions and likely hundreds more. And I'll again reiterate as I am looking at new photos of young boys lined up single file taken outside the fence of one of these facilities in El Paso. We have still seen NO similar photos of the girls, and it is really weird. Is there ANY actual oversight on what goes on in these places??
The entire thing is infuriating, as these people have no shot no matter what they do, but this part is especially chilling:
TM: So what is the process for separation?
AC: There is no one process. Judging from the mothers and fathers I’ve spoken to and those my staff has spoken to, there are several different processes. Sometimes they will tell the parent, “We’re taking your child away.” And when the parent asks, “When will we get them back?” they say, “We can’t tell you that.” Sometimes the officers will say, “because you’re going to be prosecuted” or “because you’re not welcome in this country,” or “because we’re separating them,” without giving them a clear justification. In other cases, we see no communication that the parent knows that their child is to be taken away. Instead, the officers say, “I’m going to take your child to get bathed.” That’s one we see again and again. “Your child needs to come with me for a bath.” The child goes off, and in a half an hour, twenty minutes, the parent inquires, “Where is my five-year-old?” “Where’s my seven-year-old?” “This is a long bath.” And they say, “You won’t be seeing your child again.” Sometimes mothers—I was talking to one mother, and she said, “Don’t take my child away,” and the child started screaming and vomiting and crying hysterically, and she asked the officers, “Can I at least have five minutes to console her?” They said no. In another case, the father said, “Can I comfort my child? Can I hold him for a few minutes?” The officer said, “You must let them go, and if you don’t let them go, I will write you up for an altercation, which will mean that you are the one that had the additional charges charged against you.” So, threats. So the father just let the child go. So it’s a lot of variations. But sometimes deceit and sometimes direct, just “I’m taking your child away.” Parents are not getting any information on what their rights are to communicate to get their child before they are deported, what reunification may look like. We spoke to nine parents on this Monday, which was the 11th, and these were adults in detention centers outside of Houston. They had been separated from their child between May 23 and May 25, and as of June 11, not one of them had been able to talk to their child or knew a phone number that functioned from the detention center director. None of them had direct information from immigration on where their child was located. The one number they were given by some government official from the Department of Homeland Security was a 1-800 number. But from the phones inside the detention center, they can’t make those calls. We know there are more parents who are being deported without their child, without any process or information on how to get their child back.
I'm sorry, but if this is even remotely accurate, Godwin's Law can go fly a kite. Anyone participating in this process is a flat-out monster. Does anyone doing this even comprehend the historical context of "we are going to give your child a bath" being used as a lie and excuse to get a parent to allow a child to be taken away?? Again, if what this women is describing she is seeing on a daily basis since this took place is even 75% accurate, we are looking at something so shameful I can't even put it into words. This is how it starts. As always, it starts with those who are viewed by the current society as undesirable and not wanted. As scapegoats for the economic anxiety of the majority. History has given us the warning signs. Shame on us if we ignore them when they are blaring so loudly. We have every opportunity to stop this.
Taking them away to give them a bath is just so eerily similar to take them away to give them a shower. Thank God the outcome is not the same, but it is the same lie used to calm the families down when separating them.
Again theres no reason to do this. Trump is doing this mainly because he thinks it will be leverage so he get concessions from democrats. He wants drastic cuts to LEGAL immigration and his racist monument (the wall). He does not care, has no empathy, he thinks he can get one over because Democrats do care. And Trunp doesn't care because he's just going to lie about it anyway and the fox News crowd will either believe it, give him a pass because he's on their team, or they don't care and have bought the antiimmigrant message.
These powerless kids are pawns and victims of Trumps lies and games. And "Conservatives" go along with it because he may be a monster but he's their monster. Same attitude with Hitler in the beginning. Germans were like "this guy's kinda nuts but at least he's only being bad to immigrants, jews and gypsies, hey we gotta rebuild Germany first!"
If you had told me on Trump's inauguration day that Trump was going to enforce a policy of automatically separating families and forcibly taking sons and daughters of all ages away from anyone suspected of crossing the border illegally and locking them up in detention facilities for weeks and months at a time, before due process of law...
...I would have thought that this was some paranoid fantasy, because no American administration would be so indifferent to human rights as to imprison civilian children and take them away from their parents before the parents were even given a hearing. I would have dismissed that claim on the grounds that whatever Trump was, he was not the fascist wannabe tyrant that people believed he was, and say that the fears that the U.S. government would begin deliberately targeting racial minorities were completely unrealistic.
I would have wildly underestimated the Trump administration's capacity for cruelty.
If you had told me on Trump's inauguration day that Trump was going to enforce a policy of automatically separating families and forcibly taking sons and daughters of all ages away from anyone suspected of crossing the border illegally and locking them up in detention facilities for weeks and months at a time, before due process of law...
...I would have thought that this was some paranoid fantasy, because no American administration would be so indifferent to human rights as to imprison civilian children and take them away from their parents before the parents were even given a hearing. I would have dismissed that claim on the grounds that whatever Trump was, he was not the fascist wannabe tyrant that people believed he was, and say that the fears that the U.S. government would begin deliberately targeting racial minorities were completely unrealistic.
I would have wildly underestimated the Trump administration's capacity for cruelty.
I also want to be clear about something. I am aware that people who commit serious crimes become separated from their children, that in some cases those children may end up in a foster care situation if EVERY other family option falls through. But that is not what we are talking about here. Many things are "illegal", and crossing the border without documentation is certainly one of them (though again, it appears that many of these people are attempting to claim asylum and being flat-out ignored). But crossing that line into the US is in NO WAY worse than going 80 mph in a 70 mph zone, or running a stop sign, or any of hundreds of other fairly innocuous crimes or infractions. It just isn't. Most of us technically break the law many times every week, or every day.
What the child separation seems to be here is part of the punishment phase of the justice system. Taking the children is being used like a judge would use jail time or probation. Except it isn't happening before a judge. It is being done by individual on the ground law enforcement. And as you mentioned, it is being done before any sort of due process is taking place. Weeks or months beforehand. By the time the due process does take place, the children have been scattered to the wind, neither the parent nor the child seems to have either a.) the knowledge about how to contact one another or b.) the means to do so.
As I mentioned, 91% of these cases in the last month are first-time misdemeanor offenses. We are not treating them like what they are. The punishment being dished out here is not only completely out of proportion to what is being done, but it is being done in an extrajudicial manner. If the focus here is actually keeping illegal immigrants out, then for god sakes set up FAMILY detention centers to take care of this. But since they aren't doing that, the only conclusion I can reach is that it isn't about keeping illegal immigrants out. It is about satisfying some sort of need to PUNISH these people for the most insignificant of crimes when taken on it's own.
I don't believe the specific aim of the policy is to punish people. I think there are 2 objectives: - to provide leverage with Congress to get the changes to immigration (including funding for the wall) that Trump wants. - to deter potential immigrants elsewhere from travelling to the US.
Of course, whether or not punishment is the aim, to inflict such fear and misery on people for either of those objectives is not just bad policy - it's evil. I'm not in the least a political activist, but I feel as though I need to do more than register disapproval of this policy on an online forum.
I don't believe the specific aim of the policy is to punish people. I think there are 2 objectives: - to provide leverage with Congress to get the changes to immigration (including funding for the wall) that Trump wants. - to deter potential immigrants elsewhere from travelling to the US.
Of course, whether or not punishment is the aim, to inflict such fear and misery on people for either of those objectives is not just bad policy - it's evil. I'm not in the least a political activist, but I feel as though I need to do more than register disapproval of this policy on an online forum.
I feel that way as well, except I am unsure what to even do to effect any change in the matter besides possibly giving money to legal groups attempting to represent or help these people. I know many people starting today are going to be holding protests outside detention facilities, and many Democratic Congressmen are now starting to actively go to these facilities and demand to be shown what is going on inside, but, frankly, protests don't have any effect on this Administration. The only thing that can actually be done is to vote.
I mean, at this point, do Democrats just have to give in and give Trump everything he wants in regards to immigration policy and wall funding to stop this?? Maybe. But why would they trust that a pathological liar would keep his word?? Do we just give the hostage taker his demands?? I would say that is only justifiable if you can actually reasonably believe it will fix the problem. I don't think I can possibly trust that even if Trump was given 100% of his demands he wouldn't just then, like Darth Vader, "alter the deal".
For all their other faults (and good lord are there many) the Catholic Church at the very least is being VERY consistent on this issue and are condemning this policy from top to bottom as an abomination.
If the Democratic party wasn't weak and riddled with corruption Trump would never have been elected in the first place.
Weak, yes. Corrupt, to the same extent any political party is corrupt. But this game of "if only the Democrats had done x and x and not done x and x" being used as THE main explanation for Trump seems designed to me to do nothing by rob the Republican Party of all responsibility for him. And the fact is, Donald Trump had no real concrete political beliefs before he embraced birtherism during the Obama years. If Donald Trump was looking to take over one political party to run for the Presidency, he could have ostensibly choose either one. The fact that he choose the Republican Party, and has now consumed it whole, is telling in and of itself.
There is a clear line of how Donald Trump ingratiated himself with the GOP base. He listened to and studied talk radio. He watched alot of FOX News. He then started appearing on FOX News on a regular basis saying he was sending private investigators to Hawaii to prove Obama wasn't a natural born citizen. He flirted with the idea of running in 2012 but never would have actually had the balls to go against Obama directly. He continued with the same pattern. In the last GOP primary, he descends down an escalator and gives a speech that's main focus point is describing immigrants as rapists and murderers, with the caveat that "some" are good people. And as someone who has studied right-wing politics of the last few decades, I knew right then we were off to the races. By the time he had given out Lindsey Graham's phone number on life TV and starting talking about "low energy Jeb", I knew he had the nomination (I said so in this thread long before it became popular, and was pretty much dismissed). The moment he started describing immigrants in those terms and started advocating for violence at his rallies, I knew he was the full-blown Coca-Cola the Republican base had been waiting for after a steady stream of Diet Coke for the last 30 years. He was inevitable. In fantasy terms, he is the soul of right-wing radio and FOX News made manifest in human form. He is everything the political tactics of the right had been training and conditioning their voters to think for 3 decades. And he just walked in and took over the party. Because the party had been waiting for him the whole time. Donald Trump is what you end up after years of the same tactics being used slightly less blatantly by Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. And yeah, he went up against a woman who happened to be as viscerally hated in some circles as she is admired in others.
I could barely finish reading this, and I don't even have kids. The entire way the system is set-up is at odds with any hope of reunification of the parents with their children. A toxic mix of incompetence and cruelty:
It's only been one month. This is going to get way, way worse by the end of July and August. I mean, what is this?? We deport her back to Guatemala and then just KEEP her son indefinitely?? Again, this is for all intents and purposes, kidnapping by the State. She has been given her punishment, which was to be sent back. We still have her child. He was taken in an extrajudicial manner. It's kidnapping.
Incidentally, I now am aware of the name of the 5 remaining Democrats who are still holding out support on the bill to end this practice, and one of them is my Senator up for reelection, Heidi Heitkamp here in North Dakota. I've been willing to give her a pass on guns because of the EXTREME rural nature of most of the State, and the realization that she is a Democrat trying to walk a very fine line in a deep-red State in the Trump-era. But I feel like I have to call her office this week and tell them that despite what I can sometimes write off as pragmatic centrism for the sake of getting re-elected here, I cannot vote for her if she continues to straddle the fence on this issue. Then again, unless thousands of other people are doing the same, I am a tree falling in the forest making a sound no one will hear.
If the Democratic party wasn't weak and riddled with corruption Trump would never have been elected in the first place.
I love that reasoning.
“This party is corrupt, so let’s elect someone who will probably go down as the most corrupt politician in American history!”
Whatever allows a person to sleep better at night I guess.
The party is corrupt, so attacking someone on the basis of corruption fails on the grounds of hypocrisy. "We are less corrupt than the other candidate" is not a basis for getting the vote out. The party is weak, so attacking someone because their ideas are stupid and evil fails because they have nothing better to suggest.
Every political system accretes corruption over time. The only way to tackle it is to periodically press the reset button. Show me a political system that has been stable for hundreds of years and I will show you something that is long overdue kicking down.
If the Democratic party wasn't weak and riddled with corruption Trump would never have been elected in the first place.
That's like saying "she wouldn't have been raped if she wasnt so weak" or "you wouldn't have been robbed if you had an alarm system".
How about blaming the perpetrator of the heinous and evil acts which by the way he is still doing.
Oh, the Democrats are claiming to be the victims now, are they?! The Democrats aint the victims, the people of Earth are the victims, the Democrats are the bystanders who stood by and did nothing.
Comments
I (and many others) are also starting to find it exceedingly odd and worrisome that the scant pictures we have seen of these children (since they aren't allowing reporters to take pictures or video, which in and of itself is an alarm bell) are ALL young boys. Where are the girls?? For that matter, what is happening to the infants, who may in fact have been relying on breast feeding for their nutrition??
Chris Hayes of MSNBC (who essentially broke this story nationally on his show a few weeks ago) is saying that they have obtained documents that shed even more light on what is actually happening here, and will be reporting on it tonight. I will be watching, and will post what is reported, and link the video if I think it warrants it like last time.
We got an Attorney General quoting the Bible passage used to defend slavery as the reason and we got a President who won't even admit that he's doing it without blaming others - he takes no responsibility. Totally disgusting.
Speeding
Driving without license or insurance
Shoplifting
Prostitution
Graffiti
Trespassing
Marijuana possession
1st-time DUI
Public Drunkenness
Failure to appear in court
Obscenity
NONE of these crimes if committed by anyone on this forum would likely result in more than a single night in jail before being let out in lieu of a court date. Even if that court date came, a first time offense for even the most serious of them would likely result in (at most) a hefty fine and some probation. Some of them are likely to ONLY result in a fine. Yet the same level of crime is being used as an excuse to hold people indefinitely while awaiting an immigration hearing and, more importantly, as an excuse to STEAL their children and throw them into camp run by private companies (for a profit) for months on end. In a development that should surprise absolutely no one, former Iraq War defense contractors are getting on the action. This is being done to make money:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/defense-contractors-cashing-in-on-immigrant-kids-detention?ref=home
From the article:
MVM bills itself as having “extensive domain expertise in counter-narcotics, criminal and civil investigations, public safety, and national security.” It’s perhaps better known as a security contractor for U.S. intelligence.
How does that in ANY way qualify a company to run a detention center for young children??
Federal Contracting databases show MVM was awarded a contract worth up to $8 million over the next five years. The contract, kicked off in September 2017, calls for the company to provide assistance in emergency shelter operations for unaccompanied children and extends through September 2022.
In addition to MVM’s work with the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), it also has contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for transporting unaccompanied undocumented children around McAllen. According to a contractor database, the work has earned MVM nearly $43 million since last September.
More:
It’s not just MVM. The defense contracting giant General Dynamics is advertising a data-entry position within ORR’s case-coordination program for undocumented children that will, among other things, monitor youths’ cases as they move through the system. Other General Dynamics jobs for ORR involve policy analysis; tracking “new placements and progress of minors in ORR funded care”; supporting ORR’s director in, among other tasks, “review[ing] files and redact[ing] information as directed.”
Defense contractors. It always comes back to millions upon millions upon millions of dollars for defense contractors. What defense contractors know about running a facility engaged in what would essentially be child care is anyone's f***ing guess, but there you have it. The military and prison industrial complexes have finally figured out a way to merge. All it's going to take is snatching thousands of children from their parents at the border.
As of 3 hours ago, 43 Democratic Senators are in support of a bill barring this practice. In a surprise to absolutely no one, not a single Republican has joined. They are imploring even ONE to do so, and being met with silence.
technicality.
I agree Guantanamo Bay was terrible too, those pictures. Bush and Cheney and those guys gave free reign to torture. There's the passage in Comey's book talks about how he had to said by the FBI directors bed and block the AG from getting the dying FBI directors sign off on the "enhanced interrogation program" (torture) that Bush and Cheney and those guys were trying to get the dying man to sign off on since Comey was saying he wouldn't. So that was Comey's other main claim to fame before screwing up the election and helping Trump. And anyway, it turns out the next AG just authorized the torture program anyway.
Obama messed up by not closing that place as he said he would and also since he didn't prosecute people like Gina Haspel for the torture program their careers were ruined - but not ruined enough - because Trump sought out those torturers and gave them jobs in the current administration.
We've discussed extensively in this thread issues in the US that (obviously in my opinion) breach basic human rights. For instance the proportion of the population that are in prison is incredibly high, as is the proportion that can't access health care.
The law in Scotland was changed some years ago to specifically include upskirting within voyeurism and that would seem to be an easy way forward.
I dare say coverage abroad of this issue has been at least as much about the process as the issue itself. The proposed bill on upskirting was a private members bill, not something introduced by the government. This type of bill can easily be lost because the time available to take it through Parliament is very limited. In this instance the time ran out because a single MP exercised their right to object to its passage - triggering a need for debate which was not possible in the limited time. However, the government supported the bill and have said that they will now add the issue to the government's own legislative program, so it shouldn't take too long to get the law amended.
As a wider point I have some sympathy with the MP who raised the objection. He knew nothing about upskirting itself, but he's part of a small group of MPs who believe in principle that it's not right to change the law without properly debating issues (there's a bit about that in this article) - and he's raised this type of objection on numerous occasions before to prevent things going through on the nod. It would obviously be far preferable if he took the chance to look at proposed bills and think about whether they made sense ahead of time, but there clearly are instances where changes to the law have been made quickly in response to public concerns and it's later become apparent that the revised law wasn't working well - the law on dangerous dogs is often referred to in this category.
As my son has epilepsy I probably react to this sort of thing emotionally, but the medical profession and public are strongly in support of a change to the law to allow medical uses of cannabis (many are also in favor of making it legal in toto, though the basis for those arguments is rather different) and I'm pretty sure that will happen in future. It's a real anomaly at the moment that medical use of heroin is so well established that no-one even thinks twice about this, whereas cannabis is totally outlawed.
In the interim until the law is changed we're left with ridiculous situations like this one. Personally I find it hard to believe there is actually no way forward if officials chose to exercise it. I know there is for instance provision in the law to allow unlicensed medicines to be used in individual cases and I'm pretty sure there would be the possibility of a similar sort of exemption in this case. I'm not sure if the reason for not exercising that possibility is the result of some people holding strong philosophical objections to cannabis, or just a 'jobsworth' mentality.
Edit: I've just confirmed it's possible for the Home Office to issue a temporary license, so this case could be resolved immediately. This isn't the only case of this type though, so there's clearly resistance somewhere to using the exemption procedure even where there seems such clear medical justification.
Edit 2: I had intended to note another oddity in the original post, but forgot - that the UK is the largest producer and exporter of cannabis-derived medicines in the world.
Edit 3: 5 hours after my original post it's just been announced that the Home Secretary has issued a license. It seems pretty clear to me that the publicity over this has concentrated minds and I'm glad this case has now been resolved. Let's hope lessons are learned about how to ensure things don't go so far with future similar cases.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/us/marijuana-seizures-child-services.html
Who's Really Fighting Legal Weed
Side Effect Of Legal Pot: Police Budgets Take A Hit
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/16/politics/trump-separation-families-negotiating-tool/index.html
Children used as negotiating tactics.
And in Tornillo, the Texas town chosen for the tent city, the later part of next week is calling for daytime temperatures of well over 100 degrees, with night-time temps hovering around 75-80. The chances of dehydration and flat-out heat exhaustion not becoming a problem in a crowded camp with vulnerable children and overworked (and likely unqualified) adults as this goes forward is basically nil.
Who is asking questions like what medications these children may be allergic to?? Do they have learning or behavioral disabilities?? What sort of nutrition and formula are being given to infants who may have been breast feeding?? Frankly, is something even as simple as whether one of these kids has a peanut allergy even being taken into consideration before they are taken away?? Because that example alone could result in a fatality. Is ANYONE asking these questions?? Because I feel like I am probably putting more thought into asking about this stuff in this post than the border patrol is likely doing in real-time on the ground. Giving these kids a bed and blankets and throwing "Ice Age" with Spanish subtitles into the DVD player is not going to get the job done.
What are the procedures on how to deal with kids who wake up screaming?? Who become (justifiably) angry or just plain refuse to cooperate?? Are they physically restrained in handcuffs and put in a solitary area if they start lashing out?? How long are they kept there alone are what are they given in regards to food and water during that time period?? Moreover, just what in the hell are the qualifications of the companies running these facilities?? The American public deserves an straight answer to ALL of these questions and likely hundreds more. And I'll again reiterate as I am looking at new photos of young boys lined up single file taken outside the fence of one of these facilities in El Paso. We have still seen NO similar photos of the girls, and it is really weird. Is there ANY actual oversight on what goes on in these places??
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/whats-really-happening-asylum-seeking-families-separated/
The entire thing is infuriating, as these people have no shot no matter what they do, but this part is especially chilling:
TM: So what is the process for separation?
AC: There is no one process. Judging from the mothers and fathers I’ve spoken to and those my staff has spoken to, there are several different processes. Sometimes they will tell the parent, “We’re taking your child away.” And when the parent asks, “When will we get them back?” they say, “We can’t tell you that.” Sometimes the officers will say, “because you’re going to be prosecuted” or “because you’re not welcome in this country,” or “because we’re separating them,” without giving them a clear justification. In other cases, we see no communication that the parent knows that their child is to be taken away. Instead, the officers say, “I’m going to take your child to get bathed.” That’s one we see again and again. “Your child needs to come with me for a bath.” The child goes off, and in a half an hour, twenty minutes, the parent inquires, “Where is my five-year-old?” “Where’s my seven-year-old?” “This is a long bath.” And they say, “You won’t be seeing your child again.” Sometimes mothers—I was talking to one mother, and she said, “Don’t take my child away,” and the child started screaming and vomiting and crying hysterically, and she asked the officers, “Can I at least have five minutes to console her?” They said no. In another case, the father said, “Can I comfort my child? Can I hold him for a few minutes?” The officer said, “You must let them go, and if you don’t let them go, I will write you up for an altercation, which will mean that you are the one that had the additional charges charged against you.” So, threats. So the father just let the child go. So it’s a lot of variations. But sometimes deceit and sometimes direct, just “I’m taking your child away.” Parents are not getting any information on what their rights are to communicate to get their child before they are deported, what reunification may look like. We spoke to nine parents on this Monday, which was the 11th, and these were adults in detention centers outside of Houston. They had been separated from their child between May 23 and May 25, and as of June 11, not one of them had been able to talk to their child or knew a phone number that functioned from the detention center director. None of them had direct information from immigration on where their child was located. The one number they were given by some government official from the Department of Homeland Security was a 1-800 number. But from the phones inside the detention center, they can’t make those calls. We know there are more parents who are being deported without their child, without any process or information on how to get their child back.
I'm sorry, but if this is even remotely accurate, Godwin's Law can go fly a kite. Anyone participating in this process is a flat-out monster. Does anyone doing this even comprehend the historical context of "we are going to give your child a bath" being used as a lie and excuse to get a parent to allow a child to be taken away?? Again, if what this women is describing she is seeing on a daily basis since this took place is even 75% accurate, we are looking at something so shameful I can't even put it into words. This is how it starts. As always, it starts with those who are viewed by the current society as undesirable and not wanted. As scapegoats for the economic anxiety of the majority. History has given us the warning signs. Shame on us if we ignore them when they are blaring so loudly. We have every opportunity to stop this.
Taking them away to give them a bath is just so eerily similar to take them away to give them a shower. Thank God the outcome is not the same, but it is the same lie used to calm the families down when separating them.
These powerless kids are pawns and victims of Trumps lies and games. And "Conservatives" go along with it because he may be a monster but he's their monster. Same attitude with Hitler in the beginning. Germans were like "this guy's kinda nuts but at least he's only being bad to immigrants, jews and gypsies, hey we gotta rebuild Germany first!"
...I would have thought that this was some paranoid fantasy, because no American administration would be so indifferent to human rights as to imprison civilian children and take them away from their parents before the parents were even given a hearing. I would have dismissed that claim on the grounds that whatever Trump was, he was not the fascist wannabe tyrant that people believed he was, and say that the fears that the U.S. government would begin deliberately targeting racial minorities were completely unrealistic.
I would have wildly underestimated the Trump administration's capacity for cruelty.
What the child separation seems to be here is part of the punishment phase of the justice system. Taking the children is being used like a judge would use jail time or probation. Except it isn't happening before a judge. It is being done by individual on the ground law enforcement. And as you mentioned, it is being done before any sort of due process is taking place. Weeks or months beforehand. By the time the due process does take place, the children have been scattered to the wind, neither the parent nor the child seems to have either a.) the knowledge about how to contact one another or b.) the means to do so.
As I mentioned, 91% of these cases in the last month are first-time misdemeanor offenses. We are not treating them like what they are. The punishment being dished out here is not only completely out of proportion to what is being done, but it is being done in an extrajudicial manner. If the focus here is actually keeping illegal immigrants out, then for god sakes set up FAMILY detention centers to take care of this. But since they aren't doing that, the only conclusion I can reach is that it isn't about keeping illegal immigrants out. It is about satisfying some sort of need to PUNISH these people for the most insignificant of crimes when taken on it's own.
- to provide leverage with Congress to get the changes to immigration (including funding for the wall) that Trump wants.
- to deter potential immigrants elsewhere from travelling to the US.
Of course, whether or not punishment is the aim, to inflict such fear and misery on people for either of those objectives is not just bad policy - it's evil. I'm not in the least a political activist, but I feel as though I need to do more than register disapproval of this policy on an online forum.
I mean, at this point, do Democrats just have to give in and give Trump everything he wants in regards to immigration policy and wall funding to stop this?? Maybe. But why would they trust that a pathological liar would keep his word?? Do we just give the hostage taker his demands?? I would say that is only justifiable if you can actually reasonably believe it will fix the problem. I don't think I can possibly trust that even if Trump was given 100% of his demands he wouldn't just then, like Darth Vader, "alter the deal".
For all their other faults (and good lord are there many) the Catholic Church at the very least is being VERY consistent on this issue and are condemning this policy from top to bottom as an abomination.
There is a clear line of how Donald Trump ingratiated himself with the GOP base. He listened to and studied talk radio. He watched alot of FOX News. He then started appearing on FOX News on a regular basis saying he was sending private investigators to Hawaii to prove Obama wasn't a natural born citizen. He flirted with the idea of running in 2012 but never would have actually had the balls to go against Obama directly. He continued with the same pattern. In the last GOP primary, he descends down an escalator and gives a speech that's main focus point is describing immigrants as rapists and murderers, with the caveat that "some" are good people. And as someone who has studied right-wing politics of the last few decades, I knew right then we were off to the races. By the time he had given out Lindsey Graham's phone number on life TV and starting talking about "low energy Jeb", I knew he had the nomination (I said so in this thread long before it became popular, and was pretty much dismissed). The moment he started describing immigrants in those terms and started advocating for violence at his rallies, I knew he was the full-blown Coca-Cola the Republican base had been waiting for after a steady stream of Diet Coke for the last 30 years. He was inevitable. In fantasy terms, he is the soul of right-wing radio and FOX News made manifest in human form. He is everything the political tactics of the right had been training and conditioning their voters to think for 3 decades. And he just walked in and took over the party. Because the party had been waiting for him the whole time. Donald Trump is what you end up after years of the same tactics being used slightly less blatantly by Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. And yeah, he went up against a woman who happened to be as viscerally hated in some circles as she is admired in others.
How about blaming the perpetrator of the heinous and evil acts which by the way he is still doing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/us/immigration-deported-parents.html
It's only been one month. This is going to get way, way worse by the end of July and August. I mean, what is this?? We deport her back to Guatemala and then just KEEP her son indefinitely?? Again, this is for all intents and purposes, kidnapping by the State. She has been given her punishment, which was to be sent back. We still have her child. He was taken in an extrajudicial manner. It's kidnapping.
Incidentally, I now am aware of the name of the 5 remaining Democrats who are still holding out support on the bill to end this practice, and one of them is my Senator up for reelection, Heidi Heitkamp here in North Dakota. I've been willing to give her a pass on guns because of the EXTREME rural nature of most of the State, and the realization that she is a Democrat trying to walk a very fine line in a deep-red State in the Trump-era. But I feel like I have to call her office this week and tell them that despite what I can sometimes write off as pragmatic centrism for the sake of getting re-elected here, I cannot vote for her if she continues to straddle the fence on this issue. Then again, unless thousands of other people are doing the same, I am a tree falling in the forest making a sound no one will hear.
“This party is corrupt, so let’s elect someone who will probably go down as the most corrupt politician in American history!”
Whatever allows a person to sleep better at night I guess.
Every political system accretes corruption over time. The only way to tackle it is to periodically press the reset button. Show me a political system that has been stable for hundreds of years and I will show you something that is long overdue kicking down.